


Aconitum

by fideliant



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Healing, M/M, Non-Chronological, Non-Linear Narrative, if you squint really really hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-12-09 05:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/770788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fideliant/pseuds/fideliant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In every creature small or complex, Bilbo has known for the longest time, there exists a force of life that constantly flows through the core of its being. That he has always tried to focus this flow <i>in and through</i> to heal and never <i>out and gone</i> to kill has always been overshadowed by the fact that the former does not exist without the latter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aconitum

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/6263.html?thread=15726711#t15726711) kinkmeme prompt:
> 
> _Once in a great while, a child is born to the Tooks of the Shire with the gift of a Healing Touch. Gandalf knows that Bilbo is just such a child._
> 
> _When he speaks with Thorin about going on an adventure to reclaim Erebor, he insists that they must bring along a Hobbit, insists that Bilbo's necessary for the success of the quest, but he doesn't tell the dwarves why._
> 
> _If and when Bilbo reveals his gift, it's entirely his choice to do so._
> 
> Spans the length of the first movie, then skips ahead to the BoTFA and its aftermath.

In the old language of the hobbits, there is a name which is evoked into being when a child born a Took of the Shire displays the ancient gift. They call it _saoghal tailyr,_ literally meaning ‘sartor of life’. Lore has it that the one bearing this name has been touched by Eru himself in the womb of the mother, where it is known that life at its richest has the potential to both begin and end.

The child that emerges is said to be the embodiment of this precept, after which the stories vary considerably depending on the source. For the most filial and proud of Tooks it is described as a blessing. For others, including many Tooks themselves and the majority of houses less than friendly with one of the largest and most honourable clans of the Shire, it is feared to be a dreadful curse.

 

 

 

The knock comes at the most inopportune of moments: Bilbo Baggins pauses in the middle of sprinkling pepper over pan-fried fish, frowns, and cannot remember expecting visitors this late at night, if at all.

His door is round and painted green, the brass knob smooth and polished and cool to the touch; if he tried to read the ebb and flow of life in either object for whatever ridiculous reason, Bilbo knows that he will find none, not that he would waste his time trying. He answers the door and the dwarf standing outside barks gruffly, “Dwalin, at your service,” and because Bilbo has been raised in manners (the only thing he’s known to stave off loneliness; the implication that it’s _them_ and never _him_ ) he replies promptly, “Bilbo Baggins, at yours.”

The pan-fried fish goes to his visitor, because if Bilbo is anything he is the epitome of graciousness, though he filches a seed-cake for himself when Dwalin the dwarf isn’t looking; Bilbo is neighbourly, but he is also a hungry hobbit who has just lost his dinner to a stranger. He’s courteous, but good graces can hardly stop his tummy from rumbling in protest at its emptiness.

The second knock makes him drop the cake on the floor, and Bilbo looks down ruefully at it, wishing that he could just be hostile and cantankerous like any other social outcast, not that he has any in his address book. (He has the Gamgees and most of his extended family, even the ghastly Sackville-Bagginses, but halfway through the third page the addresses cut off abruptly and the rest of the book is completely blank.)

 

 

 

A hobbitling of the Shire experiences a miracle, one cool autumn evening where the leaves fall one by one and colour slowly bleeds out of the sky.

There is no movement inside the wooden box. He peers into it over the gnarled rim, looking for a spiral of grey, listening intently to catch the slightest rustling. When there is neither, Bilbo Baggins scoops handfuls of litter out of the way and lifts a ball of fur into his hands. “Berry?” he whispers, rubbing at it gently with his thumb.

The hamster’s eyes are closed. Her nose twitches in a manner that Bilbo doesn’t like, mouth half-open to expose a pair of splinter-like teeth. When he puts his palm over her belly, Bilbo has never known anything alive to feel so much like death.

“Berry?” Bilbo tries again. This fails to bring about any change, so he wraps his hamster in a flannel and tries to feed her slices of carrot and sunflower seeds, drips water into the corner of her mouth off his thumb, but she will not take anything. Her nose keeps on twitching in time with the rise and fall of her chest, which grows feebler and feebler still. Bilbo watches her and cries quietly as he lies in his cot, holding her to his chest and stroking her in his hands in a bid to get some warmth back into her. He has never felt so much grief before, nor the unbearable sense of helplessness that accompanies it, and wishes, just wishes that it doesn’t have to be like this, that there may be another way.

All he can think of is the soft, fading weight of fur between his hands and he thinks he imagines the slight movement of something between them, and he’s just so, so very tired…

“Ow!” Bilbo cries, though it is more from astonishment than pain. He cups his hands, gaping at the sight of Berry gnawing affectionately on a finger, her beetle-black eyes wide and shiny and focused up at him. Her body is warm, where only a minute ago it had been cold as morning dew. Bilbo laughs with boyish wonder, not even caring that his skin has broken and is bleeding where hamster teeth keep on digging, because that’s just how Berry has always been with him and besides, he is much too relieved to kick up a fuss over a little bit of blood.

Later, when he tells his parents about this, there is a long beat of grave silence before his mother bursts into tears. Confused, Bilbo turns to his father. Bungo’s face draws tight and he seems to forget the pipe smoking in his hand while an alarming weight appears in his eyes, and he suddenly looks very, very old, much older than Bilbo knows he is.

His parents make him promise to just let Berry die the next time. Bilbo doesn’t understand, but a promise is a promise, not that he is given a choice the second time round; he has a year and a half more with Berry before he finds her curled up and unmoving at the bottom of his box again, completely devoid of breath and cold as a crypt.

There is no second miracle that night.

 

 

 

Managing the dishes and kitchenware and twelve hungry dwarves is more of a test of patience rather than his hospitality, and like for all of them, Bilbo doesn’t expect the fourteenth uninvited guest who doesn’t so much as bow or proclaim service as he steps into the foyer. The dwarf that Gandalf introduces as the last member of their proclaimed company commands respect by his very presence, and Bilbo shivers despite his long-acquired belief that respect is earned, not an entitlement to those with the serendipity to be born into it.

Thorin Oakenshield looks at him, his stare regal and piercing and electric blue, and Bilbo shudders again just like _that;_ sparks racing down into his soles faster than the sedate flow of life he is innately aware of that circulates around the tangled maze of his own body.

 

 

 

His parents had forced him to promise with Berry. However, Bilbo realises one day that they never said anything about everything else.

Bilbo is in the garden where the flowers have come out into full seasonal bloom, and with a hand he is holding a wilted rose by its stem. Many of its petals have blackened and coiled inward, but in some mysterious way Bilbo cannot grasp — probably one of those ‘you’ll know when you’re older’ things his parents do not (will not) explain any further than that — he knows that it is still alive. More than just knows: he can feel it in the way his fingers tingle where he is pinching the flower and the invisible, muted throb lengthwise along its stem that distantly reminds him of a beating heart.

He rolls the stem between his fingers and a dried petal falls off. When Bilbo concentrates on the dying flower and wills the throbbing to quicken, it does, and the head of the flower lifts, plumps. The tingling in his fingers intensifies. The unhealthy-looking brownness in the stem melts into a lush green while darkened petals spread wide to boast the deep red of all roses. A petal regrows in place of the one now lying dead and shrivelled in the grass, and he is looking down into the most perfect rose he has ever seen in his childhood.

Bilbo doesn’t tell his parents about this, and spends his whole summer in the garden revitalising his mother’s favourite rhododendrons. Belladonna Took is glowing with pride at the extraordinary radiance of her front garden at Bag End, and while Bilbo admits to helping out a little with the watering and weeding, he can’t fully push back the odd guilt that bubbles up inside him at the press of his mother’s lips against his cheek.

 

 

 

“He looks more like a gardener than a burglar,” Thorin says, the humour of his statement lost in the snide grin that follows.

Bilbo bites the inside of his cheek and wonders what Thorin Oakenshield would have to say to him if he told the dwarf the exact number of dying flowers he managed to save that one summer.

 

 

 

Days where Bilbo hops on down to the creek to practice his rock-throwing are disguised adequately with a picnic basket and a mat under his arm as he leaves Bag End. Four out of five times his rock finds its mark, averaging an unfortunate bird or squirrel on one out of four of those hits. Whenever this happens, Bilbo makes it a practice to nurse the animal back to full health in a matter of seconds, resealing cracked bones and setting squashed paws until his hands are covered with pecks and teeth marks and droplets of his own blood.

After releasing the sixth hissing squirrel back into the grass, Bilbo tries to heal himself on a whim. He rubs his abused hands together and breathes on them and closes his eyes to focus on the flutter of energy in them eschewing wounds open and raw. While he can feel the flow with much more ease and intimacy than normal, try as he may he cannot shape it to any degree. It’s closer than any other flow that he’s touched, but ignores his bidding in glaring spite of that. Bilbo lets his hands fall open before him like a book and stares glumly at them, clenching them tight around something else about himself that he cannot understand and fears that he never will.

 

 

 

Bilbo’s faith is restored partially in what he can do with his mind and a touch of his hand when it snags him one of the best friends he has ever known. Hamfast Gamgee is the boy next door whom Bilbo adores, a hobbitling who, unlike his other siblings, pays no heed to his parents’ persistent warnings for him to stay away from Mister Baggins and always returns Bilbo’s greetings at the garden gate with a smile and a wave. In a way, Hamfast reminds Bilbo of himself when he was a hobbitling of eight years — like him, Hamfast loves to play tag in the fields and skinny-dip in the lake and gather acorns at the top of trees from which he rarely falls. Rarely, but not never.

“You alright?” Bilbo asks.

Hamfast grimaces, a hand held over his knee. “That usually doesn’t happen.”

“What? Bleed when you get injured?” Bilbo giggles.

“No, falling,” Hamfast sighs. He lifts his hand and the two of them gaze at the shallow gash on Hamfast’s kneecap with the fascination of antiquities dealers ogling a particularly intriguing curio. It doesn’t look too serious, and an idea strikes Bilbo.

“I can help you with that,” he tells Hamfast, and puts a hand just below the wound to get a feel of the flow. Quiet energy eddies around its edges like waves breaking around a desert isle, and Bilbo feels his palm prickle as he carefully guides the flow inward, over broken skin and ruptured capillaries and injured tissue, working it into the gash with his own private investment that he’s trained himself to keep at a minimum.

“Mummy has some bandages back home, Mister Bilbo.” Hamfast winces, though he bravely keeps looking at the gash. His eyes widen as skin knits neatly with skin and the gash steadily shrinks into itself, and eventually there is no trace of the injury left behind apart from the dried blood that Bilbo wipes off with his handkerchief. Bilbo inspects his work — new, pearly skin stretched tight across a bony, unscarred kneecap — and pats it.

“Do be more careful next time,” Bilbo says, watching Hamfast’s face. He wonders if the Gamgees have told their son about the twenty-year old tragedy that haunts the halls of the local preschool or the well-circulated (and badly distorted) myth about every hundredth child or so born of Tookish blood, but that Hamfast smiles up at him with all gratefulness and admiration convinces Bilbo instantly that he has misplaced his reservations.

 

 

 

“What is this?” Bilbo hisses at Gandalf. Dinner is over and the dwarves are filing into Bilbo’s nice, comfy living room, squashing his favourite cushions with their rears and tracking dirt over the rug he had beaten and sunned just the day before. Bilbo grits his teeth when the most rotund dwarf of them all (Bimbur or Bumber or something like that; he’s hardly had the time to memorise all their names, and what _peculiar_ names they have) splits a chair in half with his massive bulk, sending splinters everywhere.

Gandalf looks solemnly at him with grey eyes full of knowing. “A chance,” he says. “For people to see the good in your gift.”

“Like that’ll happen,” Bilbo snaps, because he already knows this song, having played it to himself countless times over the years. It had stopped being an aspiration and turned into a fantasy the day he accidentally killed Bruiser Topleaf. Bilbo still visits his tombstone every now and then, laying flowers whenever the rest of the Topleafs aren’t there. He still avoids them, or perhaps it is the other way round; thankfully, he has never felt the need to clarify which one it actually is, would really rather not, as a matter of fact. “Go ahead and tell them. We’ll see if they’re as keen to have me on their quest when they find out about the healer who also happens to be a mur —”

“I will do no such thing,” Gandalf interrupts. “You may rest assured that disclosure of your abilities will come with your strict consent, which I assume you are inclined to withhold for the time being.”

“I am,” Bilbo mutters, because he already has his hands full with nearly everyone in the Shire thinking that he’s a freak, and Bilbo really doesn’t need to add the names of thirteen dwarves and whomever they chance across on the way to that absurdly long list. “But if they don’t know, then obviously I cannot see to them if something untoward happens. How will you reconcile that?”

“Control,” Gandalf says, like it’s the answer to everything ever asked. “And a healthy bit of misdirection. Dwarves are a practical people. They will not comment on the speedy healing of cuts and scratches, especially not with bandages to hide it from their eyes. If need be, I will claim your ability to be my own magic.”

The question that Bilbo follows up with is an obvious one. “And what if it more than just a scratch? I should warn you that anything serious —”

“I am aware of the toll of using your gift to that extent, Bilbo. Very much so. Do not fear; I solemnly promise that I shall not ask anything of you that will endanger your own life. Where the situation demands protracted healing, you will be using my own life energy,” Gandalf offers. “You will be able to do that, won’t you?”

It isn’t something that Bilbo has ever considered before, using energy to heal that isn’t his own, and he runs through the theory a few times to feel safe enough to field-test it should a low-risk chance arise. Still, he shakes his head and says, “I’m still not convinced that I should say yes to this. Why should I? I can’t just go running off into the blue; I’m a Baggins of Bag End. My place in the world is here.”

Gandalf makes an exasperated sound. “The world isn’t in your books and maps, it’s out there! There is every conceivable chance for you to make a difference on this quest, Bilbo. Without you, there is every likelihood that our final count will be much less than fourteen, even considering we make it to Erebor in the first place.”

“A dragon, Gandalf,” Bilbo fumes, because he’s been in the kitchen enough to know the difficulty in speeding up the healing of burns.

Gandalf just laughs. “You’ll have a tale or two to tell when you come back,” he says, and Bilbo sighs because he already sees the assumption inherent in there.

“Can you promise that I will come back?"

The cheeriness in Gandalf’s eyes is doused immediately. “No,” he replies with a small turn of his head. “And if you do, you will not be the same.”

“That’s what I thought,” Bilbo murmurs. His mind is made up before he can think up a way out, the appeal of it too transitory for him not to take on a whim. “Fine. I’ll come.”

“Thank you, Bilbo.” Gandalf looks at him with an expression that is the closest thing to pride that Bilbo’s seen since his parents died. As if he can read Bilbo’s mind, Gandalf says, “They would be proud of you.”

 _Would they?_ Bilbo wonders morosely, but he nods and leaves his stare at a whorl of wood on one of his many nicely varnished floorboards. On the wall, his portrait of Bandobras Took grins approvingly down on all of them — one of the blessing lot, Bilbo would wager.

 

 

 

His first kill comes early at the tender age of eleven.

There is a particularly nasty hobbitling in Bilbo’s class named Bruiser Topleaf, whom Bilbo doesn’t like one bit from the moment he lays eyes on him. Bruiser is the sort of person that reminds Bilbo of all the nasty villains in his favourite bedtime stories, with his unkind smiles and ham-sized hands and his penchant for blowing spitwads at other hobbitlings with the bad luck to be seated within his range of fire, and accosting them after class with far-from-pretty aftermaths. Breaking Bilbo’s crayons during art class is the final straw on the proverbial camel, and so Bilbo promptly informs their teacher the first chance he gets, earning Bruiser fifteen minutes in the corner while the other hobbitlings carry on with their pastelwork in much-awaited peace.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bilbo glimpses a seething glare in his direction, and tries to focus on touching up the shade of yellow he has on the sunflower he’s sketching with the usable half of his snapped crayon.

School is dismissed at a quarter to lunch. Bilbo shovels his things into his bag and joins the rest of the class in wishing their teacher _good-day_ and leaves the classroom. He is thinking eagerly about what his mother might have prepared for lunch that afternoon when he is yanked aside and slammed painfully against a wall. “Tell-tale,” a voice says, and then a fist clips Bilbo’s cheek, sending him chin-first onto the floor.

Too stunned to cry out for help, Bilbo tries to crawl away, but a pair of hands grab him and flip him over. Bruiser glowers down at him, grabbing Bilbo by his throat and squashing a palm against his nose. “I’ll teach you to tattle, rat.”

“No,” Bilbo manages to gasp. Panic seizes him as Bruiser tightens his grip, cutting off air, and Bilbo whimpers, starting to cry. “Please, no —”

(Many decades after what happens next, Bilbo will remember this moment with exceptional clarity as a warg’s skull swallows up the tip of his blade; not for the shock of adrenaline punching through him, momentarily frazzling the equilibrium of his own flow, but for the acute perception of a living creature having life itself sublimate from its very pores like sweat on an exceptionally hot day.)

Above him, Bruiser’s face suddenly changes. The aggression is replaced slowly by confusion, then realisation, then melds into a grotesque expression of abject horror. His pudgy cheeks blotch an alarming plum colour and faintly bluish tributaries start to etch across his temples. In their sockets, his eyes roll upward, bulging gruesomely. He cannot seem to close his mouth, through which ghastly choking sounds begin to rattle. Bilbo doesn’t register that he is grasping Bruiser by the wrist until the larger hobbitling falls off him with a bodily thud, purpling and gagging, and even then Bilbo doesn’t let go until Bruiser stops twitching beside him and the minute throbbing in his meaty wrist has faded into nothing.

Bilbo _screams._

 

 

 

In every creature small or complex, Bilbo has known for the longest time, there exists a force of life that constantly flows through the core of its being. Like blood in a body, like fluid in a plant, like rivers carrying water down from the mountains to the sea. Far outside the limits of physical sense, he feels it flowing in plants and animals and people, over his fingers and hands like bands of fine silk. When Bilbo has the time and composure to stand still and focus, he can even sense the pulsing breath of the earth running deep below him as it rises through the soil and grass to tickle the soles of his feet.

And in every creature he touches, he can feel each and every turn of that flow at a single graze of barest skin, read a person down to his soul by the basal distribution of energy to limbs and organs and cells the same way a cartographer studies a map. Sometimes he thinks it has to be magic (even as it is common knowledge that hobbits are as un-magical as vegetables), if for the way it makes his skin seem to fizzle and hum whenever he has the chance to touch and read it in a living, breathing body that is not his own. His sensitivity to it surprises him at regular junctures throughout his life, but Bilbo supposes it’s mainly to do with years of living through there being exceedingly few people in his life who would accept a handshake when he feels brave enough to offer, much less initiate one themselves and be comfortable enough for close physical contact with him.

He’s never asked for the concomitant ability to direct this flow as he chooses, command it to quicken or slow after tracing the signature of its essence, nor to be able to break it up at will or dissipate it like dust in the wind. That he has always tried to focus this flow _in and through_ to heal and never _out and gone_ to kill, at least to the best of his consciousness and more often than not at the expense of a great portion of his own strength, has always been overshadowed by the fact that the former does not exist without the latter.

 

 

 

“I do not know what it is about you, Halfling,” Thorin says, “but Gandalf has told me that you are of utmost importance to our quest. Have you stolen anything before?”

Up on his pony, Bilbo wrings the reins in his hands and immediately nixes the sarcastic answer that comes to mind. He’s as much an adventurer as he is a burglar, which is to say not at all, but to keep his cover from being blown he inclines his head and says, “Stole some pies when I was a lad,” because that much about him at least is true and it is much easier to tell a half-truth than a lie. Where other hobbitlings were rewarded with biscuits and pastries for hanging around the baker’s, Bilbo would have always come home with nothing if it hadn’t been for the exceptional lightness of his fingers (the baker’s wife had perennially complained about _that Topleaf boy_ to Bilbo, but she’d gone to the funeral with the rest of Hobbiton and, just like the other adults who attended, never spoke a word to Bilbo after that).

“Pies,” Thorin repeats slowly in a tone of voice clearly reserved for talking about incredibly unimpressive things. Bilbo is thinking about roughly half a dozen things he can snark back bitingly when Thorin continues with, “I expect it will be useful should we run out of food on the way.”

Thorin sounds dead serious, which Bilbo regards carefully for fear of being made to look like a complete idiot. “Will we run out of food?” he responds slowly, because if it’s a game that Thorin is playing with him, Bilbo likes his odds of coming out on top.

“The journey will take a month at least. If the bare minimum of things go wrong,” Thorin concedes. “During which resources are expected to run scarce; it would be foolish to assume they will not. I will be needing every able-bodied person to be occupied with contributing to the company. If you are able to steal food, we will rely on you as a last resort if it comes to that. Can you fight?”

“Er.” Bilbo scratches _combatant_ off the list of things he is most certainly not, right below _burglar_ and _adventurer_. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at it.”

“A no would have sufficed, halfling,” Thorin says curtly. “Being concise in your speech is something you should learn. I assume this means you are not versed in wielding a weapon as well?”

“I can throw stones,” Bilbo says rather lamely, feeling hurt.

“That will not be necessary. Ori is already proficient at the slingshot, but I suppose it’s better than nothing,” Thorin continues coolly. The detachment in his tone makes Bilbo feel immensely distanced from him, even as they are riding just a few metres apart. “Have you taken a life before?”

Bilbo stops breathing. He can feel the agitated energy coiling between his stomach and his heart like the swell of panic rising up his windpipe. He plucks up enough courage to lie at the same moment Thorin snorts and says, “Of course you haven’t. You would not be able to harm a fly, would you?”

“I might, if I really wanted to,” Bilbo shoots back, letting some of his anger into his voice. Because he’s here on his own volition, masquerading as a thief and besmirching his name for the probability that he’s going to save some of their lives in the future, and given all that Bilbo thinks he’s entitled to a bit of respect at the very least.

“No, you wouldn’t,” Thorin says, turning to lock eyes with Bilbo. His expression stills the flow of energy running amok deep inside Bilbo; Bilbo’s heart stirs gently at the sincerity in Thorin’s face, opening a bit to the quiet soberness at the back of his piercing, ocean-blue eyes. “You are not a killer, that much about you is obvious. Do not misunderstand my intent, halfling. It is not an enviable thing to be willing to bring an end to the life of another being, no matter what the circumstances are. There is no shame in staying your hand when given the choice and the situation permits. Killing is easy. Mercy is hard. For that, I do believe that you are quite possibly the strongest out of all of us here. Remember that, Bilbo Baggins.”

Thorin turns his eyes back to the road ahead without another word, and Bilbo sits dumbstruck in his saddle atop his pony, the world a little more aslant than he remembers as he tries to grok what just happened. At a future point where many of them are roughed up and smelling of troll sack, Gandalf hands him his first weapon and speaks of a similar paradigm whilst Bilbo unsheathes Sting and gazes upon it in awe. Blinking at his bewildered-looking doppelganger splayed across the flat of the blade, Thorin’s words flash back to Bilbo in a clear and sure line of memory, and Bilbo feels something close to admiration and closer to affection twinging across his heart.

 

 

 

Both his parents arrive to take him home from school the day one of the hobbitlings ends up dead. Normally, where the situation warrants, such as when he stays late and needs accompaniment, Bilbo knows that his mother usually picks him up, and infrequently his father drops by on the way back from work, but it is always either one of them and never both.

Bilbo sees his father first, then his mother steps into the principal’s office. They share the same expression, one that Bilbo cannot bear to look at after one glance of it eats away at his heart. Already being conscious of their stares on him makes him shiver, his sobs repressed in the knowledge that he has done something terribly, irreparably wrong that crying will never be able to make right again.

“He can’t come here anymore,” Bilbo hears the principal saying stiffly. He’s always liked Mister Reginald and he’s always loved school; why would Mister Reginald say such a thing? “You know that I’ll have to inform the Thain about this.”

“Yes, of course,” Bungo says, sounding dreadfully empty. It scares Bilbo to hear him like this — his father has always been bright and cheerful and strong. His voice now doesn’t suit him at all. Not in the slightest. “Better you than anyone else, I suppose.”

Bilbo keeps his gaze down, battling back the milky blur of tears glossing his vision. He is falling back into a low-bubbling panic, the feeling of which he remembers much too well, and he quickly tries to think of cheerful things like spring and honey-cakes and oil pastels colouring in a rainbow across the unbroken blue of a sky on a page.

Instead, all he can think of is the twisting of Bruiser’s face as he died, the stuttering cadence of his final breaths like a plea to live. Bilbo cries into his lap, his sniffing piercing the heavy silence that has settled over the entire office.

“I’m sorry, Bungo. Truly, I am,” the principal says, and the worst part about it is that he sounds like he means it.

“I know.” Bilbo flinches away unthinkingly from the touch of his father’s hand on his shoulder — what if he ends up like Bruiser? — but Bungo persists in reaching for him and rubbing soothing circles into the flat of his back. The gesture awakens Bilbo’s earliest memories of his father, of peaceful nights in the fall, being rocked in arms which he is almost too big for and yet insist on cradling him. Bilbo drowses against his touch now as he had when he had still not learned how to stand on his own two feet, his fears fading into a quiet sense of peace. “It’s not your fault,” his father says thickly, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear but too indistinct to figure out who he’s addressing.

No one says anything else. Bilbo, not sure if whoever his father is speaking to believes it, doesn’t feel sufficiently sure that it is him to nod.

 

 

 

They take him home and put him to bed and sit in the living room facing each other while Bilbo watches around a corner. Nothing happens between any of them until his father gets up and goes to the kitchen and finds Bilbo in the hallway on his way back. He hugs Bilbo and carts him off back to bed, pulling the covers over Bilbo and kissing him goodnight for the second time.

It is silent for the rest of the night. Bilbo sleeps badly and wakes in the morning to his mother fast asleep at the foot of his bed in her nightrobe.

He doesn’t so much as touch anyone for months.

 

 

 

The ring brims with energy, as if it possesses its own flow of life. Impossible, of course, for a flow to exist in something made of metal. Bilbo holds it up to his face and rolls it between his fingers — it is a simple accessory without any adornment or engraving, just a small band of glinting gold that would fit snugly around his index finger.

And yet. Yet. It is warm, but in an inexplicably uncomfortable sort of way. He almost thinks he can hear it whispering. The prickling in his fingers is far from benign, and at the furthest corner of his thoughts is a voice urging him to throw the ring as far as he can. A voice that sounds a little bit like Gandalf, but also like his father.

A faint crest of energy flares out from it like a corona around an eclipse. In the distance, an echo of clattering shifts Bilbo’s thoughts from the ring. As he moves towards it, Bilbo pushes his hand into his pocket with the ring still in his palm, where it continues to tick and buzz like an exceptionally small timepiece.

 

 

 

Bilbo learns about the deadly beauty of equivalent exchange the night his father passes away. He is vaguely acquainted with the concept — push and pull, an eye for an eye, energy to move energy — having been explained to briefly by his mother the only time they’ve ever talked about his ability, but that was years ago and he’s hardly had any trouble with healing scrapes and bruises since then. Perhaps, he thinks as he revives a wilted flower back to glory, it is because he’s special, even more so than his father assures him he already is, not to mention the fact that having over twenty years of practice tends to make one good at what he does, and healing is all that Bilbo has ever known.

As far as he’s willing to admit.

It is an illness without any known cure that strikes Bungo Baggins down, some sort of malady which stumps the village doctor, whose quiet condolences Bilbo overhears as they are offered to his mother. Bilbo looks down at the floor, flexing his hands at the stirring of life that distills into his fingertips. It is the first time in his life that Bilbo has felt a sense of something so close to duty, and will not remember carrying anything as heavy for most of his adult life.

He slips into his parents’ room and looks at the figure on the double bed there. The illness has left his father’s once-kindly face gaunt and still, his lips ashen grey. From what Bilbo heard from the front door, he knows that the doctor thinks Bungo Baggins is dead. Bilbo rests his hand over his father’s chest and finds comfort in the doctor overlooking what many others in the Shire have about Bungo’s only child, now a hobbit of adult age with the uncanny power to heal at a touch.

Locating the remnants of the flow that was once there takes a little longer than Bilbo is used to, but he does after a while, and what is left of it is but a ripple compared to the lively whiplash of rushing current that he remembers of his father. When Bilbo dips into it, he gets a reaction almost instantaneously. The trickle turns into a minute flow, accelerating slowly as Bilbo prompts it gently. Bilbo is dizzy with relief, much too heartened by these results to take his hand away even as the tingling sensation spreads up his arm and into his chest, snaking around the excited hammering seated in there and turning into the feeling of having something drained out of his body along that path, and when he is gasping uselessly for breath around the tight constriction of his belabored lungs, he hears a muffled scream and a hand that is not his nor his father’s flies to his wrist to wrench him back, breaking his connection to the flow before he collapses at his father’s bedside and blacks out.

When he regains consciousness, it is to his mother crying his name and frantically shaking his shoulders. Bilbo sits up groggily with sore arms and a terrible ache starting between his eyes, in which there is a blurriness that he blinks away quickly in time to return his hands to Bungo’s now-still chest and feel the last threads of life slip away from the only person who has ever made Bilbo truly believe that he was special.

 

 

 

Thorin looks dead. He looks deader than most. That doesn’t matter, Bilbo thinks desperately as he jumps off the eagle and scrambles to Thorin, none of that matters a snit; what matters is the flow when he finds it, because it is all that he needs.

His hands scramble to fit on top of each other over Thorin’s chest and locates the flow threading across his slow-rising ribs in a matter of seconds. Bilbo nearly laughs with relief. By his side, Gandalf sweeps the sleeve of his robe over them like a curtain to hide Bilbo from view and offers his other hand to Bilbo.

“No, no.” Bilbo shakes his head firmly, calming his nerves to prepare himself. “That won’t be necessary.” The flow is still mildly strong, only needing a bit of encouragement to find its way to the places in need of accelerated healing — he senses the disturbances along Thorin’s ribs and parts of his arms; punctures and bruises and some strained muscles. Bilbo focuses his will into the stream and lets it move together as one, observing Thorin’s face carefully as scrapes patch themselves over and bruises lighten in colour, feeling the drain beginning at the bottom of his chest and cutting himself off from the flow at the slightest movement of Thorin’s eyelids.

Thorin blinks up at the burnt-orange sky. “The halfling?” he whispers.

“I’m here,” Bilbo says. Realising that his hands are still on Thorin’s chest, he still does not remove them just yet, circling them over the now-steady flow below them. The other dwarves have bypassed Gandalf by now and are milling around the two of them, and Dwalin and Kili step forward to help Thorin to his feet.

“You!” Thorin says accusingly once he’s standing near his full height again, and Bilbo feels the smile slide away from his face like water off greased paper. “You nearly got yourself killed! Did I not say that you would be a burden? That you would not survive in the wild and that you had no place among us?”

Each word knocks the air out of Bilbo’s lungs until holding back his tears and taking in his next breath are mutually exclusive. He swallows nothing down just to get feeling back into his jaw and stands his ground, longing for the strength to be able to think of a rebuttal, but for now he is absorbing everything that Thorin is throwing at him, oblivious to everything save for the words being spoken and the sudden constriction of flow at the base of his throat.

They are now close enough that their faces are nearly touching. Bilbo can feel Thorin’s breath on his face, warm and humid. “I’ve never been so wrong in all my life,” Thorin says quietly, and then he is kissing Bilbo.

The embrace comes quickly after that, giving Bilbo even less time to figure out what to think even as he realises that thinking isn’t the best thing to be doing at this point in time and he just lets his eyes flutter shut, and it’s really this easy to love someone else, isn’t it, just like how the need to heal has become second nature to him and it’s the same feeling when he wraps his arms around Thorin and fails to get them all the way around the dwarf, but it’s fine, it’s fine, nothing could ever be more fine than _Thorin_ and _kissing_ and the both of them _alive_ for this one precise moment in time.

At this distance and with so much contact, Thorin’s flow could be very well his own, but for the first time in his life Bilbo can’t bring himself to see any of that. Couldn’t pay it any attention even if he wanted, with all he is aware of is the smell of sweat and dirt and blood wrapped up in the heaviness of Thorin’s body, and he feels like an idiot because he’s crying and putting his face on Thorin’s chest, surrendering himself into the clasp of arms where it feels like everything begins and nothing has to end. He is drowning in more love than he’s ever known, and just lets it wash over him and sling him out like a tide, like an undercurrent below the waterline.

“I would have doubted myself too,” he tells Thorin later, still swaying on the spot in his arms. The hold Thorin has on him is strong, reassuring, though Bilbo dips back effortlessly into the flow of life pulsing against him and knows that it is still taking Thorin a great effort to keep on his feet. He slowly gives Thorin some of his own strength, seeping it into the flow carefully and making himself a part of Thorin. The thought of that strikes a chord with Bilbo, and he smiles; he’s never thought of it that way before, and it feels poetic, it feels right.

“Then you would have been as wrong as I was,” Thorin says, hand cupped to Bilbo’s cheek with a look of pure marvel on his face. “Your bravery is nothing like I have seen.”

Bilbo shudders. He’s never been called brave before, and the concept is a bit startling if not terrifying. True, he hadn’t planned to jump into the fray like a berserker, and yet he knows that he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he’d let someone die. And that someone had been Thorin, who is now encircling him with his arms and giving out love in his touch and eyes and flow, and Bilbo buries his face in his chest to give it back to him.

 

 

 

“It could have been worse,” Bilbo says as he dresses Thorin’s wound.

“Any worse and I would have been torn in half,” Thorin mutters. He is lying on his side with his arm jackknifed behind his head to expose the bite marks, which have stopped bleeding but still remain visibly raw. Bilbo reckons that it’ll probably take at least two more sessions of healing to get the scarring to fade, but he touches Thorin and is encouraged by the regularity of the flow that he’s innately familiar with, now.

“Well, then it’s good that it wasn’t any worse.” Bilbo soaks the dressings Oin gave him in the disinfectant and presses it to Thorin’s side, shushing him when he makes a strangled noise.

“I’ve had worse,” Thorin grumbles.

“Hard to believe,” Bilbo teases, beaming inside at how much of Thorin’s insularity has left him. Lying down, Thorin looks like a child with his pouty mouth and furrowed brows and the way his eyes ogle the wounds in his side curiously. Bilbo thinks about tucking him into bed and bringing him soup — perhaps feeding him medicine and having to hold his nose to get it down his throat — and giggles. He reminds himself that he’s in love with this dwarf, in fact has been for a while, and reaches to twine his fingers with Thorin’s in affirmation of this. The flow pulsing against his fingers quirks with excitement. Bilbo smiles at Thorin.

“I am not a liar,” Thorin says seriously, displaying it in his face to be betrayed by the affection in his energy.

“Hm, I don’t believe I called you one,” Bilbo says ponderously. He lets himself be dragged down to Thorin, putting his palms on his bare, hairy chest and slopping a kiss onto his mouth. Thorin’s lips are tinged with energy, and Bilbo can taste sea-salt and dry dirt caked against them.

“You may as well have,” Thorin growls. He rubs his bearded cheek into Bilbo’s waistcoat and pulls Bilbo to lie beside him, tucking a hand under Bilbo’s chin to lift his mouth to his, sipping delicately at him.

“Did you mean it, before?” Bilbo asks.

“Did I mean what?”

“The thing you said about me being the strongest,” Bilbo says, because he can still hardly believe it now. If he has Thorin say it now, then there is no question that he means it, but Bilbo isn’t too sure about back then and needs to know, for some reason. Hearing it will help validate his perceptions about Thorin, and know whether he can truly trust himself to him.

“I believe I just said that I am not a liar,” Thorin purrs. He brushes his thumb over the corner of Bilbo’s mouth, looking at him in wonder, then nips his bottom lip and moves up into another kiss. “I meant it then. I mean it now.”

“Oh,” Bilbo says breathlessly, feeling victorious in a weird sense. Maybe, then, that was the moment that that he started to love him. It’s only been less than a day, but Bilbo already feels entirely comfortable with the relationship that they now have, as if he was born for this all along like he was for healing. Everything about Thorin thrills and amazes him, observable at their proximity, their contact unmistakable. He wants to know more about Thorin apart from the flow he’s had the opportunity to map many times over, wants to listen him talk and whisper his secrets to him and vice versa, no barriers between them, not even for what he can do. He swallows his words down and laughs when Thorin kisses his nose adoringly. “Are you just going to kiss me all day?”

“Perhaps,” Thorin says, like he is giving it serious consideration.

“I’m still not done with you yet.” Bilbo indicates the clean bandages he has in his hand.

“If you insist.” Thorin gives Bilbo enough space to sit up and he turns back on his side, pillowing his arm behind his head.

Bilbo finishes up with binding a thick stack of gauze to Thorin’s side and ostensibly checks the skin around the dressing, adjusting the flow inward a little at a time so as to not rouse Thorin’s notice. He leaves his hand there on Thorin’s side, fingers tickling the exquisite softness of his chest hair and palm settling over the warmth of his curvilinear ribs, the beating of his heart. The familiarity of the flow is something rare and new to him, and he appreciates it fondly, dipping his head down to kiss Thorin again.

 

 

 

The stranger arrives a week after they bury Bungo.

He’s old and taller than anyone Bilbo has seen, and greyer. Grey hat, grey robes, grey beard, and eyes the colour of storm clouds. He easily occupies Bag End to the roof when Bilbo’s mother lets him in, and makes himself comfortable on the sofa even as it groans under his weight. His long (grey, of course) staff knocks against the floorboards, sparks fizzling out of its tip.

Bilbo catches his eye around the corner of the doorframe and blushes when the stranger waves a friendly hand and smiles at him. Unsure of what to do next, Bilbo stares back wordlessly, but heeds his mother’s instructions to go set the kettle on and bring out some tea.

“Do you know who I am, Bilbo?” the old stranger asks when they’ve all had their tea poured and are sitting in the living room. He lifts his cup to his mouth and sips, humming softly in enjoyment.

“I’m afraid not,” Bilbo mumbles gloomily over his tea. He’s come to associate having tea with the need to be consoled, after spending an entire week crying at infrequent times of the day for a week and then having to make himself a cup to temporarily feel better. It was only when he opened the tea-leaf jar in the pantry and found it empty on the third day that Bilbo remembered how he was very much like his mother in many ways.

That they never made tea for each other speaks volumes that Bilbo is too jaded to attempt at dissecting.

“My name is Gandalf, Bilbo. I am a wizard.”

Bilbo feels his face lifting into a small smile, which the tea has long lost its ability to do. “A wizard? Do you have magic?” he asks. He’s only ever heard about magic in the stories he used to be told from his fables, and once fancied himself being able to use it someday.

“A fair bit,” Gandalf concedes. “Most of which I use to make rather delightful fireworks, some of which you’ve probably seen before.”

Bilbo turns to his mother, excited. “Mother, at Midsummer’s Eve —”

“Yes, those were Mister Gandalf’s.” Belladonna smiles wanly at Bilbo, then Gandalf. “But that’s not why I’ve asked him to come here today.”

“Because it is not what I’m here to do,” Gandalf says, nodding at Bilbo. He puts down his cup and stretches a hand out, which Blbo regards with slight confusion. Bilbo looks at Gandalf’s face, apprehension threading thinly through him. “Do not be afraid. I only wish to help.”

“Help?”

“Take my hand. Go on.”

Bilbo looks to his mother for confirmation, but the worry in her eyes masks any prompting which might lighten his unease at obeying Gandalf. He frowns at the wizard’s hand, which is pale and wrinkled and open-fingered in invitation, and shakes his thoughts away. Whatever it is, Bilbo thinks he’s old enough to start thinking for himself. He claps his hand to Gandalf’s and grips it tight, and cannot stop the gasp from bursting out of him on contact. Tracing the flow that exists inside Gandalf is like being thrown into a set of rapids, powerful and crashing and buffeting about at an intensity that manages to wind Bilbo in his seat. The maelstrom jags up into Gandalf’s arm and joins with what feels like a hurricane contained inside a wizard, impossible to think about touching without drowning in it, much less harnessing or controlling.

“Good,” Gandalf is saying, and then out of nowhere Bilbo sees a quick flash of metal and abrupt dissonance slices across the palpable flow up Gandalf’s arm; Bilbo nearly wrenches his hand back, but Gandalf holds him firmly. The dagger that Gandalf has used to nick his wrist drips blood as he puts it back into his robes, and he bends down to be at eye level with Bilbo. “Now, I wonder if you could try helping me, Bilbo.”

“I can’t,” Bilbo moans, starting to feel a bit dizzy.

“Try. You won’t know if you don’t try.”

“I can’t, I’m scared,” Bilbo says, though he doesn’t let go and holds on even tighter, his other hand braced in the cushion of his chair for balance. The slice that Gandalf has made is short and narrow, running over the slight curve to the underside of his arm. Blood wells up in beads, blooming bright red blossoms on the floor as they fall.

Gandalf shakes his head. “Try.”

Bilbo approaches with the air of a person who has been told to leap head-first into a whirlpool, but with Gandalf’s constant egging on and the gaze of his mother on their linked hands, Bilbo tentatively slips into the flow, testing the waters. Far from what he’d expected, it doesn’t take him or drag him out or swallow him up. It swirls and rages beneath him, and he can feel the slight tug of traction drawing his own flow into Gandalf’s, moth to flame, a slow hypnosis. He wonders, briefly, about attempting to bid the flow to move according to his will, and is shocked back into the impending reality of its magnitude when it slaps and roars around the incision in Gandalf’s arm like a band of angry predators maiming their kill.

“I can’t,” Bilbo says for the third time. He bows his head to hide that he is already crying.

Gandalf moves his face even closer, speaking at a low, reassuring whisper. “Do you remember the first time you helped something? Or someone? What did that feel like, Bilbo?”

Bilbo thinks of Berry, but says and does nothing.

“I know that you’re afraid — of what you can do, what you’ve done with it — but that’s why I’m here. Come, just try. I promise you that everything will be alright,” Gandalf says.

“Promise me that,” Bilbo gasps. He lifts his gaze to look into Gandalf’s eyes, seeking sincerity, expecting lies. “Promise me it’ll be alright if I do.”

The open candour of his smile makes Bilbo feel almost ashamed at himself for ever doubting the wizard. “I promise,” Gandalf tells him.

Bilbo looks away quickly, down to the warm hold of Gandalf’s hand and ignoring the trickle of blood down his wrist. He focuses to get the flow back into definition in his mind, looking past the gale that only threatens to blow him away, tear him to pieces, but never does, and issues a command through his consciousness for the flow to weave into the bare line of the cut. The response is so immediate that Bilbo loses track for a second; the energy in Gandalf’s arm lines up with stunning speed and folds into the slit, staunching the bleeding and regrowing skin so quickly that the wound heals fully before Bilbo can blink.

“Good,” Gandalf says quietly, slipping his hand out of Bilbo’s and inspecting his wrist where he’d made the now-healed cut. “Very good indeed.”

The new skin almost glimmers when Gandalf flicks his wrist and the sunlight catches it, a pale slice of taut, unbroken flesh.

 

 

 

Fili is the first one that Bilbo makes it to on the battlefield. The dwarf takes a misstep and an orc mace to his ribs, falling limp onto the ground like a marionette that has had all its strings cut.

Invisible, Bilbo stabs the advancing orc through the bottom of his chin with Sting before the fiend can finish Fili off, yanking it back out with a brilliant spurt of blood. Bilbo quickly kneels and puts a hand over Fili’s shuddering chest — the flow presents itself with boldness contrary to its rather rapid weakening. He can feel it spidering out from the dwarf’s chest, leaving broken bones and pierced lungs behind as it recedes. He only has minutes left at most, but Bilbo concentrates and pulls the unwilling flow back into Fili, feeling his ribs grind and shift back into place and correcting the halting energy in his body until his life is no longer in danger.

“Help, help!” Bilbo screams after taking his ring off. “Here, please help me!” Nearby dwarves answer his call and carry Fili away between them, and Bilbo puts his ring back on before any of them can recognise the hobbit which their king had explicitly condemned at the gate.

 

 

 

Not two steps afterward, Bilbo cuts down three more orcs before he sees Kili’s lifeless body slumped against a tall rock, his bow snapped in two in his lap. He is in a worse state than Fili was, Bilbo realises once he has closed the distance and has his hands on the dwarf’s shoulders. Bilbo repeats the labour of guiding the flow into the wounds on his head and back to heal them sufficiently for Kili’s breathing to even out. Bilbo has to steady himself when he is done, the effort of bringing two people back from the threshold of death beginning to tax him. With no dwarves nearby to help, Bilbo drags Kili behind the rock and hides him there, slipping the ring onto his finger for good measure.

Bilbo waits for a while to winch up his strength again, and when he feels brave enough to chance a look, he peeps around the corner of the rock. Waves of dwarves and elves and men flood into the epicentre of the fighting, meeting the orc hordes concentrated between all of them. Overhead the eagles circle and swoop every once in a while to tear at wargs and orcs, snatch them up and drop them back down to their deaths. Bilbo feels himself go still when he sees Thorin battling three orcs at once near the gates to Erebor, slaying two and killing the last after being pierced in the shoulder by a spear.

Thorin falls to a knee, wrenching the spear out of him. He doesn’t see the massive, threatening orc striding up to him with an axe in hand, but Bilbo does.

Bilbo is on his feet and running before he can even think about what he’s doing.

 

 

 

He doesn’t make it in time to stop the orc from burying the head of his axe in Thorin’s back, but lunges at him with Sting, missing by a hair and drawing attention to his presence. Bolg turns around sharply, slapping Bilbo aside and sending Sting flying from his hand. The orc warrior grabs Bilbo around the throat and squeezes tight, but Bilbo clutches his arm with both hands and focuses with every fibre of his being, even as he starts to chokes and his vision goes blurry.

After a few seconds of contact, Bolg’s hold weakens enough for Bilbo to breathe, then releases completely. It takes a while before the orc is gasping and bowing and twitching on the ground, Bilbo still holding his arm and continuing to concentrate. Bolg goes still, but Bilbo doesn’t release his hold until he has erased all traces of life in the orc, and by that time the effort of doing so has exhausted him thoroughly. He crawls over to Thorin, standing already an impossible task, and puts a shaky hand on his chest. “Thorin,” he gurgles, giving him a small shake. “Thorin…?”

Thorin doesn’t respond. His chest doesn’t move with the motions of breathing, and Bilbo can sense the lifestream inside him leaking out like a water skin that has had holes poked in it. It has already bled away from the many wounds decorating Thorin’s shoulder and back and torso, and where it remains it pools with the bare minimum of significant presence for Bilbo to detect it. He’s felt this before, once, at his father’s side when he was on his deathbed. “No,” Bilbo mumbles, pushing himself to his knees. “No…don’t die, please —”

His first attempt to tow the flow back into order is met with resistance before it gives in unwillingly, creeping life toward the yawning void in Thorin’s chest. A few gashes on Thorin’s face fade a little. He begins to breath shallowly, but only just. It is not long before the drain of energy has Bilbo on the verge of collapsing over Thorin, but he holds himself up and keeps his hands over Thorin’s chest and pays no attention to the frightening awareness of slow, gradual suffocation. Bilbo’s breaths come sharp and pinched, burning his lungs. His heart feels like it’s being crushed in a vise. His energy flows down and out of his arms, syncing with the faint pulse of life streaming back into Thorin. No one is there to stop him or pull him away, and he says a silent thank-you to the gods for that.

Bilbo sucks in one last breath and lowers his face to Thorin’s, his vision already twisting into a cascade of wild shapes and black, floating dots. “Live,” he whispers against Thorin’s mouth, and kisses him and gives everything he has left to give before the world turns to black.

 

 

 

When Bilbo wakes, it is in utter confusion.

He is lying on a soft bed in a small, quiet room. His head is still roaring with weariness, and he remains unmoving for a few minutes longer, too tired to do anything else. Bilbo shifts slightly, and finds that there is a hand holding his lightly. He opens his eyes to the dim light of candles burning and a mass of long, dark hair curtained next to his arm. “Mm, what?” Bilbo slurs drowsily.

The hair lifts to reveal Thorin’s sleep-addled face. “Bilbo?” he mumbles, eyes hazy and unfocused.

“Thorin,” Bilbo says back, recognising him after his vision has cleared sufficiently to make out shapes and faces. “What…?”

Thorin’s eyes find his face, and the dwarf’s expression melts. “You’re awake,” he says, sounding torn with relief.

“I’m awake,” Bilbo repeats, for want of anything better to say in reply. He squints blearily but makes no effort to sit up, settling for just squeezing Thorin’s hand weakly. Unconsciously, he feels Thorin and plugs into the flow coursing between his fingers to read it, and it is strong and healthy and without distress.

“I have prayed for so long,” Thorin says, lifting Bilbo’s hand to kiss his knuckles, “that you would be brought back to me. I feared I had forfeited you.”

“Did you, now? Well, I’m not going anywhere.” Bilbo lets his eyes close with a soft sigh under his breath, exhaustion pulling him back into sleep. He feels the movement of Thorin leaning over him and doesn’t have to do anything but lie there and let the kiss come, chaste and sweet on his lips, and he smiles and chortles affectionately before he lets go and slips back under again.

 

 

 

Bilbo’s convalescence lasts a week, after which he is out of bed and roaming about a reclaimed Erebor at Thorin’s side. His legs are still weak after being in bed for so long, and has to sling an arm through Thorin’s for support as they walk together. Most of the dwarven kingdom is still in ruins, and they have yet to clean up the month-long aftermath of the battle. Bilbo gawks when he learns that he’s been unconscious for that long, although he doesn’t want to stop kissing Thorin when he finds out about the nightly bedside vigils which he’s been assured that Thorin carried out religiously. “I didn’t know you could be so devoted,” Bilbo murmurs into his beard. He twirls the tip of it in his fingers and scrapes his thumb across Thorin’s chin, sending a jolt to his own flow.

“I was destroyed…the last things I said to you…” Thorin gulps, seemingly unable to continue.

This sobers Bilbo instantly. “That was horrid of you, yes.” Being reminded of the incident at the gate makes his stomach flip — not so much for the thought of being thrown to his death, but the terrible prospect of having to use his ability against Thorin if it had come to that. “And I’m sure that you’ve probably already said it loads of times when I couldn’t hear, but I’d like to hear it again, please.”

“I’m sorry,” Thorin says in a rush. “For everything that I said and did. I would take it all back if I could, believe me.”

Bilbo shuffles his throat.

“I will regret nothing more than that until the day I die,” Thorin continues, lowering his head penitently. “That I ever threatened to hurt you or raised a hand against you — I know that you have every right not to forgive me.”

“Go on,” Bilbo says, eyebrows raised.

“Please forgive me,” Thorin asks. “I’ll quite understand if you don’t for the time being, and I don’t know if anything I say will be enough, but I’ll do everything in my power to make things right between us. Even if I can’t, then at least give me the chance to try. Because I only found out that I couldn’t bear to lose you when I saw you when they first brought you in, and I was a fool not to have seen that a long time ago. I’m sorry for that, for the way I was.”

“I know. I don’t think I could lose you either,” Bilbo says softly.

“Right. Good.” Thorin blinks, looking endearingly awkward on his feet. “And…it’s because of how I feel towards you. I lost sight of that just once, to my avarice, and nothing felt worse after I realised what I’d done. When we started out, I said you were the strongest of us all, do you remember? I now know that to be true more than ever, because you saved my life again even though you didn’t need to.”

“I saved you because I love you, you clot.” Bilbo shakes his head, exasperated. “I don’t need any other reason. You make me feel happy and safe and loved, at least when you’re not about to throw me off a mountain.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s good. Thank you, Thorin.”

“Is that it, then?” Thorin says desperately. “What about now? Is it all gone?”

“No,” Bilbo admits. “It isn’t. I still think you’re a bit of a git, and also quite possibly an idiot —” he giggles nervously, “— but that’s not something I can’t forgive you for. I still want to be with you, if you’d like that.”

“Always,” Thorin confirms. “I’d like nothing more.”

“Then it’s settled.” Throwing his arms around Thorin’s neck, Bilbo tiptoes to kiss him, feeling the automatic movement of Thorin clutching him, supporting his back to lift him up a little, both of them being rather small though Bilbo knows he’s smaller than Thorin, and he thinks about this and wonders what it has got to do with Thorin’s mouth on his and being delved into the loveliest dwarf he’s had the fortune to know.

“Could I ask you something?” Thorin murmurs against Bilbo’s half-parted lips.

“Mm?”

“I’ve been told…a number of people swear to me —” the apple at Thorin’s throat bobs with a swallow, “— you were the one who slew Bolg.”

“Yes, it was a lucky hit,” Bilbo fibs.

“They said you were unarmed. Dwalin said that he thought Bolg was going to kill you, but…instead, you killed him.”

Ah.

“Bilbo,” Thorin says gingerly with the air of someone about to ask a huge favour, “how did you kill Bolg?”

“Er. Well.” Bilbo purses his lips and gives lying a thought. He takes a deep breath, and finds that he’s too jaded to spare the effort for it. “Okay. See, there’s this thing I can do…”

 

 

 

“Ready?”

Oin looks miffed. “Once again, I must advise you against this, Master Baggins. If we remove the axe head, Bifur —”

“Will be fine.” Bilbo pats the massive dwarf’s shoulder and holds on. He sends the flow of energy surging into Bifur’s head and saturates the corners of the aperture that the axe head occupies. Bifur grunts vaguely in reply, eyes shining with solid will.

Looking disgruntled, Oin looks to Thorin, who nods and says, “I trust Bilbo. Bifur has consented as well.”

Oin just sighs and gestures for Bofur to approach, the two of them gripping the edges of the axe head. “On three, then: one, two, three!”

The axe head slides out of Bifur’s skull with bits of brain and bone and a trickle of blood, making a noise between a grind and a slurp, and Bifur gives an ear-shattering bellow, his hands scrabbling frenziedly at the gaping hole left behind. His hand still gripping Bifur by the shoulder, Bilbo immediately urges the flow inward and looks on with the rest of the dwarves at the hole, over which skin and bone visibly regrow into a small depression, before that too bulges up to fully reconstruct the dwarf’s skull.

Oin’s mouth falls agape. Thorin and Bofur look at Bifur, then at Bilbo, who lets go and shrugs and says, “That’s how it usually goes.”

Bifur, on the other hand, feels his forehead with one hand with a look of pure amazement on his face, lips moving soundlessly until they find a single word:

“Oh.”

 

 

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Thorin asks later when they’re alone.

“Because I was afraid,” Bilbo replies, twiddling his thumbs.

“Why? What you can do is incredible.”

Bilbo sighs tiredly. “It’s not that simple. It…goes both ways — that’s how I defeated Bolg.”

“And you thought that I would have reacted negatively on knowing that?”

“Everyone else did,” Bilbo says moodily. “Back in the Shire, I mean. They all know about me, you see? Look, when I was a hobbitling, still in school. There was this other kid in class, and one day there was…an accident. I didn’t mean to, he was going to hurt me and I panicked, but that was enough for me to lose every friend I ever had and it’s hard to make new ones when everyone else won’t even so much as look at you, like I’d kill them too if they came too close.”

“You were lonely,” Thorin says with quiet sympathy.

“Very. Even my family, the Tooks, they knew about this ability — my mother said that it runs in the bloodline — and some of them treated me like I didn’t even exist after that. And, well. My own family didn’t want me after they knew I could do this.” Bilbo clenches and unclenches his hands. “What more for dwarves I’ve only just met?”

The look that Thorin gives him is so unbearably sad and pitying that Bilbo has to look away from him. Bilbo doesn’t move, lets Thorin come to him and put his arms around him, hug him tight and breathe a kiss into his temple. Being in love must be the reason for the renewed jauntiness of Thorin’s flow, Bilbo thinks. It twists and floats in cycles that he doesn’t remember feeling before, and he’s had a lot of time to unravel the mysteries of Thorin Oakenshield for all the touching they’ve done. It’s something new and wonderful, nothing short of what Thorin’s been to him thus far.

“You never have to be lonely again,” Thorin says down into his hair. He pets Bilbo with one hand and strokes his cheek with the other. “I’ll make sure of that myself.”

“I’m holding you to that,” Bilbo murmurs into his breastbone, which thuds with Thorin’s heartbeat and rises gently with his breathing. He doesn’t feel alone now, as a matter of fact, with so much indicative of life held against him and someone wanting him close and never far, and he smiles, eyelids fluttering shut as he is pulled closer into the warmth of Thorin’s embrace.

**Author's Note:**

> This fill is the result of playing way too many MMORPGs in healer or support roles.
> 
> The description of Bilbo's ability borrows heavily from that of evolved human [Jeremy Greer](http://heroeswiki.com/Healing_touch) in the television series _Heroes_ , which is described literally on the show Wiki as a 'Healing Touch', although I have tweaked it slightly for believability.


End file.
